S1E7: 3 Things You Should Do Before Leaving Your Job
So, you’re holding a full-time position now and you aspire to start your own business one day. It may be tempting to leave your full-time position now that you’re inspired, but hold your horses, my friend! You must listen to this episode to guide you through what you MUST do before leaving your full-time job to start a business!
Listen to the Episode below:
In this episode, you'll hear about the 3 things you should do before leaving your full-time job to start a business and how to:
Build your financial reserves
Validate your business idea
Strengthening your Entrepreneurial Mindset
Today we're going to talk about the 3 things that you should do before leaving your full-time job to start a business
So, you’re holding a full-time position now and you aspire to start your own business one day. It may be tempting to leave your full-time position now that you’re inspired, but hold your horses, my friend! In this episode, we’ll be diving deep into the 3 things you should do before you leave your full-time job to start a business.
As Robert Kiyosaki has mentioned in his book, Rich Dad Poor Dad, there are 4 ways to produce income: being an employee, being self-employed, being a business owner, and being an investor. Your aim is to move from being an employee to that of a business owner because that’s where 95% of wealth lies. It’s great that you’re thinking of jumping ship to captain your own ship.
While it may not be easy at first, it will become easier when you do these 3 things before leaving your full-time job.
Build your financial reserve
Basically, you need to save about 6-12 months worth of personal living expenses before you leave your job. Right now, you have the stability of a full-time income which is going to help you build your financial reserve so much faster.
So, what you need to do is to set a side a little money every single month when your paycheck comes in. Set aside that money as a form of accountability for you when you start your own business.
You do not want to be in a situation where you are working on your business and you are struggling because you are trying to find ways on how to pay your bills and your mortgage. Well, doing and building up a financial reserve that is worth of 6-12 months of your personal living expenses really helps to free your find from wondering when you’ll make the money to clear your mortgage.
And it really helps you free your mind so that you can focus on actually developing and building the business itself, instead of trying to make ends meet. So, while you’re doing that, start building your capital as well. We’ll cover this in-depth in the next episode.
Validate your business idea
Everyone who is inspired and aspire to become a business owner or even an entrepreneur always comes up with a “brilliant idea” and they think that their idea is the best one in the world. Naively, that it will sell and make money for them. More often than not, that’s not the case. So what you have to do is to first validate your business idea.
If you have a product-based business, or intend to have one, you validate your idea through a prototype. Try a crowdfunding campaign to see if your product is what people need and are willing to buy at your price-point. A lot of Kickstarter campaign has been successful because they start off with a prototype.
The beautiful thing about crowdfunding is that, if you’re able to make your deadlines clear in your crowdfunding campaign, people are willing to wait to be the first to have their hands on your product. So, think about it deeply and see whether you are willing to spend some money on crowdfunding campaign to test the validity of your prototype.
Now, if you have a service-based business, line up your business with clients. Land projects where the total profit can give you a steady monthly income. I like to think that if you’re currently making $3000 a month on your monthly salary, try to line up clients that can pay you the $3000 a month.
So instead of thinking, okay I’m going to be able to land 3 clients, each of it worth $1000 and it adds up to be $3000 revenue a month. Now, look at it from a bigger picture.
If you can get each client to pay you $2500 a month, and you have 3 clients, that will give your company a total revenue of $7500 a month. Assume you have to hire someone at $1800 a month. Minus that off, and you now profit $5700 a month.
And out of this $5700, you can take home the $3000 that you earn to continue your daily expenses and your day-to-day life. That is how you’d want to think about validating your business if you’re a service-based business.
The numbers are proof of your business viability. If the numbers are good, you should start your exit to your job after you’ve built your financial reserve
Strengthen your entrepreneurial mindset
This is the most important advice I can give you: your mindset helps you win the entrepreneurship game. This is a lonely journey and sometimes painful too. You’ll be surprised how often people give up!
According to a US Study, 50% of small businesses fail in the first 4 years with only 4% of that making it to the second year. In Singapore, 47.3% of businesses fail in the first 5 years, which is already a better rate than US & UK Average of 50% and 42% respectively.
Invest in strengthening your mindset. Here are some things I normally do to strengthen my mindset:
The first thing is to meditate & pray
If you believe in God or if you believe in a religion, prayer really helps. If you don’t subscribe to any religion, consider meditating. You might want to do yoga too because it really helps in meditation. You can find out more about doing any forms of meditation through exercises. Do it as often as you need to.
Then, you’ll realise that meditation helps you to command the core of your being and being able to centre yourself and knowing what it is that you want to do, channeling all your energy to what you want to achieve at the end of it all.
Read lots of motivational books.
Here are some books I recommend as a start, which I read when I began my journey are:
Secrets of the Millionaire Mind by T Harv Eker
Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki
The Secret by Rhonda Byrne
The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg
You can even listen to or watch inspirational shows like:
MarieTV by Marie Forleo
Melyssa Griffin Pursuit with Purpose Podcast
Or the right now, where you’re tuning in, to Fempreneur Secrets Podcast
So there you have it! Those are the 3 things you should do before leaving your full-time job to start a business. There’s plenty more advice but I found these 3 things to be the most critical in your pursuit towards entrepreneurship.
Being a women entrepreneur isn’t easy, and the journey is even tougher on us than towards men. But we have a community of other women entrepreneurs willing to support one another.
What do you think?
I'd love to know what you think of this episode. Do you plan on leaving your full-time job soon to start your business? If so, where are you now in that plan? Share with me in the comments below!
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